Kaleidoscope
by EasyThereGenius
Summary: Being unconscious is the best thing to have happened to him for ages. AU during season 1.
1. Chapter 1

**KALEIDOSCOPE**

**Author says: This is an AU, starting off somewhere after "Faith" and before "Human". It's being written because of Sacredclay, really. Any continuity inconsistencies are due to either a) my memory playing tricks and b) the whole AU thing. **

* * *

_**1: Rush**_

_What am_

There was a mystery to it. A trick, some would say. But then, some people were remarkably credulous. And credulity was for people who didn't see patterns.

_What am I_

Credulous was of course being too generous. What he meant, of course, was stupid. Some people were remarkably stupid.

_What am I supposed_

The console before him is full of patterns. Even the most advanced human computers aren't like this. There was logic to human systems that the ordinary human brain could grasp: windows and clicks and cascading layers of information. You started at the top with nothing but a single button, a menu, then a folder, then a sub-folder. Very boxy. Very limited, in its way.

Ancient computers - _Destiny_'s computers - are as like human computers as a Franz Hals is like a Jackson Pollock. To look into the mind of a human computer, one looks into a warehouse, full of crates, divided by a streetmap of straight lines. To look into _Destiny_'s mind, one looks into a kaleidoscope constantly flexing.

_What am I supposed to do_

"Rush."

The trick with a kaleidoscope was that although it appeared random, it wasn't. The way the glass beads rise and fall, the way the expanding and contracting patterns emerge to the eye -

"_Rush_."

- was like the way a trained eye can track the rise and fall of a melody simply by looking at the written score. The pattern exists. The brain interprets it. Because the brain is just an infinitely more complex computer, one with intuitive understanding -

"God_damnit_, Rush."

He looks down at his arm and there's someone else's hand on it. That hadn't been there before and it certainly isn't welcome.

"With a girl," he murmurs under his breath, and immediately wonders why, takes the phrase apart, analyses it. He shakes the unwelcome grip loose with a frown and glare to discourage its return. Young certainly looks as if he's wondering why. No. Maybe not. Young looks as if he's not wondering at all. He looks as if he's finally made up his mind to have his lead scientist locked up in a small padded room for his own safety and the safety of others.

He also looks really tired.

The vindictive part of Rush is immediately glad about this. A somewhat smaller part knows what really tired feels like and wouldn't wish it on anyone.

"Welcome back," says Young, with that slow, understated sarcasm that makes Rush want to deliberately ignore him this time. "Mind telling me what you're doing, here?"

"If I said I minded," says Rush, leaning heavy on the exasperated, "would it make a difference?"

Young pauses a beat. Rush enjoys that moment every time it happens, and has done ever since the man beat him up and left him to die. It's the bit where he can almost see Young counting to five to avoid hitting him again. It's a small triumph, but then every triumph is worth counting when the man you're scoring off tried to kill you and failed. If you can't outweigh a man, out-think him. Rush is smaller than Young by half a head and about sixty pounds. He already knows he can't beat him in a fight. When anger isn't enough…

Watching Young count to five. Watching monkeys try to write _Hamlet_. Watching the patterns in the computer. No wonder his eyes hurt. Too much watching. He rubs them, not caring what the hell Young thinks anymore.

"Alright," says Young, with studied amiability. "Alright. What are you doing?"

_What am I supposed to do -_

Rush brings the flat of his hand down on the console with a wordless slap. The sound carries. Brody, who has been pretending not to be there for several minutes, decides now is the perfect opportunity not to be there in actuality, and slips out into the corridor.

The urge to say something facetious is overwhelming. But there's yet another part of Rush - aside from the vindictive part and the really-bloody-tired part - which remembers Young lunging across the space between them with a look in his eyes that spoke of murder. Not that he's afraid. Not exactly. Of course not. And there's after all something more pressing, demanding his attention. Fear would be secondary, should it even exist. There is the pattern -

_- with a girl like - _

"Hey," says Young, relentlessly bovine in his continued presence. "Hey. I'm over here. Rush. Focus."

It's always been this way, for as long as he can recall now, as much as he can recall anything with so much input coming in and only a limited biological space to keep it in. Young treating him like an idiot child - an idiot savant, perhaps, but an idiot nonetheless. Or a dog. Perhaps a dog, one which won't be trained to shake paws and fetch papers. Rush decides he won't be held responsible for his actions if Young actually goes ahead and -

_- Jesamine._

Young actually goes ahead and clicks his fingers, the skin sliding against skin in a dull, peremptory fashion. "Look at me, Rush. Are you feeling alright?"

The sound snaps the fragile pattern. A notation of rest in the wrong place, for several bars. And then nothing. The patterns are just noise again. Just coloured beads sliding idiotically and single-mindedly past one another.

Rush gives him a deep, disgusted stare, and marches out of the room. When Young takes a single step in pursuit, drawing breath, the march turns into a run. The scientist is lost into the dingy corridors within moments.

Brody, upon timidly re-entering, meets Young's eyes with a helpless shrug.

"Hey, look, I didn't say anything."

"Great," says Young, wearily. "Just…great."

* * *

_**2: Young**_

He'd felt a bit like Lieutenant James must feel. And seeing as this wasn't something that happened often to a man like Everett Young, he'd paused to give it greater consideration. What had the trigger been? Good soldiers are good at seeing the split-second moment before the trigger goes off inside someone's brain, and reacting. Great soldiers are good at knowing what the trigger is so they can get to it before it's pulled.

The look on Rush's face…

The part where he'd had to do the my-eyes-are-up-here thing, that was it. James was probably used to it by now. From almost every man she'd ever met, probably. But Young wasn't, and certainly not from Rush. Oh, sure - Rush regularly ignored him. Deliberately and maliciously and, thought Young with a hint of tired amusement, with plenty of forethought. He was in fact relatively certain that had the opportunity arisen for Rush to ignore him several weeks in advance, the little scientist would have had his calendar marked immediately.

_I'm over here, Rush, focus. _

Because that had been it, really, hadn't it. A lack of focus, rather than a lack of attention. There was a definite difference. Like the man's brain had gone blurry round the edges and stopped him even performing the most basic levels of social interaction that he ever managed on a daily basis.

_And let's face it...that ain't much. _

So then. What was it this time? What fresh level of difficult lunacy had Rush managed to attain now? Was it just that they had reached the stage in their relationship (such as it was) where Rush had god-forbid felt comfortable enough to unleash the full force of his evidently dysfunctional personality on everyone?

Or was it something physical again, like the coffee or the cigarettes or the invasive surgery? That tug of unwanted responsibility snagged Young once more. If it had been anyone else probed by aliens, collapsed in exhaustion: if it had been Scott, or Brody, wouldn't he have been insisting upon more attention for them from TJ? But because it had been Rush, he'd let it go. Because it was far easier than trying to deal with it effectively.

It was far too annoyingly complicated, the dynamic. Rush, who wouldn't know how to let someone be concerned about him if he was dying on the floor and Young who didn't know if being concerned about Rush was something he could do without trying to kill him.

Too many questions. Uncertainty wasn't something Young enjoyed giving house room, and his whole damn house seemed to be crammed to the rafters right about now.

Since they'd departed the Eden planet, the whole crew had been a bit edgy, if he was honest with himself. He'd pretended in public not to notice. Wasn't politic, making more a fuss over it than necessary. Especially with TJ -

Young stopped in his tracks, a short distance away from Camile Wray's quarters.

_One problem at a time, okay? _he told himself. _We've got a decrepit ship to manage and the only guy who knows what the hell he's about just took off like a rabbit. _

He covered the final few yards, raised his fist, and knocked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author says: Thankyou for all the interest you've shown in this story so far. I sincerely hope it doesn't disappoint. I'm really not 100% happy with this chapter, but here goes anyhow. I reiterate: ****This is an AU, starting off somewhere after ****"****Faith****"**** and before ****"****Human****"****. Anything that seems wrong is either a) a author's mistake or b) due to AU. **

* * *

"_But how can you possibly be thinking of nothing?"_

"_It's dead easy, once you know how…One way is to think about the same thing again and again. Like 2=2=2=2...Everything I do is a map of itself, everything I do is a part of itself." - Oliver Sacks, Awakenings_

* * *

_**Young**_

"Well, not today," said Wray, the frown Young disliked seeing most gathering between her brows. "Why? Is he missing?"

It was the way that frown seemed to condemn him without her tone of voice changing in the least. Young rather thought she didn't actually do it on purpose, because for a purported human resources expert that would be a particularly counterproductive character trait. And for a purported human resources expert, she really wasn't that great at hiding her feelings.

_Maybe she doesn't know she does it. _

_Maybe I should tell her._

He tried to make himself comfortable on the uncomfortable chair and went back to his original question. If in doubt, always return to the basics. It's harder for people to argue with basics. Even the most twisty and determined of minds will find it difficult to obfuscate based on known facts. Except Rush's, probably. Give the man a hard fact and he'd attempt to bludgeon you into submission with it.

Wray was shifting her weight, still staring at him, and that frown almost made him wish he had a yes or no question, just to completely ground her.

"I just want to know the last time you saw him in the mess. Eating, preferably."

"Am I Dr Rush's keeper, Colonel?"

_Maybe not, after all. _

Young dropped his chin, shallowly amused. "Camile, you seem to think I'm here for some reason other than asking you about Rush. If that's the case, please." He leant back in his seat, ignoring the pressure this put on his aching joints, remaining outwardly calm. "Tell me all about it."

Boot firmly forced onto on the other foot, Wray backed down in the face of his imperturbability, as he'd suspected she would. He'd tried the pleasantries first, of course. Years of dealing with superior generals had given him at least that much diplomatic awareness. But something had changed there between him and Camile, too, ever since the coup. _Attempted _coup, Young corrected himself, smoothly. And now he got to live with that tiny, accusatory frown. He gave a moment's indulgent consideration to the possibility of Camile and Rush both being in on Rush's latest weird behaviour, and then wisely put the thought aside as she answered his question.

"You know Dr Rush doesn't eat with the rest of the crew if he can help it. I, on the other hand, prefer to eat in company. Our paths haven't crossed."

"Mmhmm. And you'd prefer to keep it that way."

The moment of surprise in her expression was satisfyingly brief. There was a familiar shudder and the sensation of stretched dislocation that announced a drop from FTL. Young laced his fingers together and looked down at them.

"Look, I'm not here to accuse you of anything. If you haven't seen him, you haven't seen him. Just be aware that as of now I'm_ asking_ you to see him. In a professional capacity."

_And look at just how quickly your face falls. _It was uncanny, really: if a civilian asked another civilian to do something, it was normal. If you put the asker in a uniform, somehow that uniform became the iron curtain.

"Fine." She was shutting him off. As effective as taking your hand from a communication stone, and almost as abrupt. "_If_ I see him. What do you want me to do?"

"_Er. Look, hello? Colonel Young? Anybody? Hello?"_

The radio cut in clear as a bell, even if Eli's intention wasn't overly clear.

"This is Young."

"_Oh, thank GOD. Listen, I'm sorry. I have no idea what the protocol is for these things m-"_

"Eli."

"_Anyway. Um. I can't get a hold of Dr Rush and I really think someone ought to come up here and take a look at this. I was on the observation deck and...well…"_

For once, Young was glad of Eli's loss of words. It was very difficult, using these radios: you never knew who might be standing by, overhearing, and it was so easy to start a panic but almost impossible to stop it.

"_Colonel Young, this is Brody. We've got a situation." _

Thank god for non-specifics. Hard to start a panic with non-specifics.

Young, somewhat relieved in many ways for the distraction, rose from the uncomfortable chair and turned his head briefly over one shoulder as he headed for the door. Wray hadn't moved, and the frown had deepened. The radio buzzed again.

"_And if there's a special code for 'emergency', I don't know what it is, 'kay? Eli out. Hey, I said, 'out', that's the -"_

Young sighed as Eli's radio mercifully cut, whether by accident or design. He traded a slightly more companionable glance with Wray.

"Tell me where he is and then keep him there," he said, and left before she could get a new question out. Probably involving how she'd manage any such thing. Knowing it wouldn't work, but unable to avoid trying, he tabbed his own radio as he walked.

"Doctor Rush, come in…"

* * *

_**Rush**_

The relative darkness of the empty corridor is almost a relief. In some ways. Not in others. The music hasn't gone away. His radio is off.

_What am I supposed to do with a girl like Jesamine._

He'd read a long time ago that the condition labelled musicophilia was related in some cases to severe oxygen deprivation of the brain, or to other types of serious brain injury. Those afflicted became convinced that music was following them around, playing on a loop inside their heads. If they were lucky, a whole composition, completely orchestrated, with the string section and the brass and the percussion. If they were unlucky, a single phrase. A single word.

_How hard did Young hit me, anyway? _

Serious brain injury indeed. Potentially the biggest single piece of the puzzle that is _Destiny_ is flaunting itself in front of his consciousness and he's thinking about the idiot Young.

_Who hit me. And what am I supposed to do - _

Musicophilia. Wouldn't arithmomania have been more apposite? At least it isn't a Christmas carol or one of those bloody American TV jingles that Greer seems to like so very much. He can almost _see_ it. The notes becoming flickers of colour and light against the dimness. Fireworks inside his head. And the higher register, like a single column of light lancing upwards from a darker, obelisk base –

_At least you could have had someone to have a decent conversation with._

Wait, what was that? The string section, cutting in. Violins. Fully orchestrated. Then refining, down to a first violin, the leader of the orchestra - the high, sweet tones, a single voice. And the deep internal sorrow crashes down again and everything goes dark. No column of light. Reality seems to stretch and the ship shudders as it slows.

Rush blinks, raises his hand and tucks his hair behind his ears, becoming briefly aware of his physical surroundings again, aware that he is still walking at a punishing pace. The low hum of the ship's systems is the only sound, inside or outside of his ears. The engines have dropped. The puzzle has either become utterly insoluble or he has -

"So. What _am_ I supposed to do?" he asks the next corridor he comes to, in an undertone.

It's the corridor which leads to the infirmary. And Lieutenant Johansen is spilling down it, her face crumpled in distress.

* * *

_**Young**_

The first alien ship hung nose to nose with _Destiny_ like a lamprey before a basking shark, a silvery arrowhead of metal before the notched axe blade of the Ancient vessel. Young stared at it without moving for a long moment. At his side, Eli was practically vibrating with his effort to stay quiet. That effort proved too much in very short order.

"So, uh, they showed up about five minutes ago? They're definitely not the same as the aliens who took Chloe and Rush, or if they are they've put serious money into pimping their rides. "

"_The ships are much more manoeuvrable than the others we've encountered," _added Brody, who in the absence of Rush was presumably in the pride of place - hunched over the central screen poking at innumerable little coloured squares, in which he seemed to find huge amounts of both interest and meaning. Young couldn't manage to find a single reason that he would want to get any more involved with those screens than was necessary. _"They didn't even just pop out of nowhere, not exactly. It was like once we noticed them…they'd always been there."_

Young had a feeling that when Brody said "we" he meant himself and Destiny, rather than he and Eli.

_These scientists…Am I going to have to drag every single one of them off this ship by the hair if we ever get to go home?_

The second ship was smaller, and trailed the first like a shy child behind its mother. Or maybe…Young narrowed his eyes. Maybe more like a general behind the infantry, the king behind the pawn. The recent memory of Rush's carefully whittled chess set nagged at him. The second ship was not as sleek, less apparently armed, lacking the forward-pointing potential weapons turrets on the first. Like an afterthought, which is the best camouflage of all.

"Shields," he said.

"_Yeah, I thought you'd say that. It's as good as it gets." _At Young's continuing silence, Brody sounded uncomfortable._ "As far as we can tell. Look, if we can get Dr Rush up here - "_

"Not gonna happen. What about the countdown?"

Pause. Silence on the radio.

"We're out of FTL, there must be a gate in range. Brody, what about the countdown?"

Eli was almost pressed against the glass of the observation deck. "But there's not even a planet," he protested. "Where's the gate going to be? I mean it's. No, wait. There's only one place it _could _be."

The younger man's tone was almost awestruck. Young just stared at the ships hanging before their nose, and didn't feel inspired to anything other than trepidation


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**Author says: AAAARGH. ****Also, Rush-centric, very short chapter. **

* * *

_**Rush**_

It's not that he's ever had any trouble reading emotions. No. Emotions are simple. They're just inconvenient when you're trying to get something done and people will insist on throwing their messy emotions all over the place. It's like trying to set up a full string of algorithms when someone else is doing their tax returns on the same sheet of paper.

There's a time and a place for feeling, and Rush is pretty much convinced that this here, right now, on Destiny, isn't it. His own feelings have already -

- no, back up, back up. There's nothing worth going there for, not right now. He raises his head from where it has started to hang.

Lieutenant Johansen looks as if her whole world has fallen apart which is incredibly inconvenient because those kind of emotions in particular can really interfere with -

"Lieutenant!"

She runs into him, not seeing him there in the dim corridor. He hisses out a breath, she lets out a small shriek of alarm, and spins away. He flattens against the wall, tucking his hands into the centre of his back, instinctively making himself smaller.

She's the military and he's not sure he trusts her. No, correct that, he is certain he doesn't trust her. She's staring at him as if he's the last person in the world she wanted to see. This isn't unusual. Rush puts it aside, because he has once again caught on the periphery of his consciousness a thread of the music. Relief floods him, incomprehensibly. Surely if one is losing one's mind, it shouldn't be a relief to find the symptoms increasing? But it feels right, so very right, and he can sense the edge of the breakthrough in a way that nearly all good scientists can, when they're so close they can taste it.

"Dr Rush. I'm sorry."

He raises a hand in a half-gesture, dismissive. Now the tune is older, more familiar - oh, what is it? - and her voice cuts right across it like a rusty bread knife, unwelcome and serrated. Why must people always be talking?

"Were you looking for me? Did you need something?"

Not her, perhaps, but the music feels as if it's coming from inside the infirmary itself. He tilts his head unconsciously, trying to track it. Recent memories flash. Dullness. Drugged. Fingers inside his chest -

His eyes must have betrayed that brief horror. Johansen, her own eyes red with just-shed tears, frowns and starts reaching out a hand. "Dr Rush?"

He's identified the music. It's a lullaby, a simple one, an old one, and the unperceived, unknown and yet undoubted disc jockey currently calling the shots in Rush's brain decides to choose that particular moment to start mixing the tracks.

_Though my eyes are open wide -_

She touches him. The second time today someone's done that. He flinches. She turns his wrist with a practiced motion and presses fingers against his pulse.

"I'm very tired," says Rush, turning his gaze to meet the medic's, sudden inspiration flowering inside his head. His mouth is full of the taste of breakthrough. A little like metal. A little like blood. He's bitten his lip. "I need to go to sleep."

_- she__'__s made my life a dream. _

Johansen eyes him searchingly, professionally, releasing her grip. With the music suddenly increasing in volume (_an affirmation, it's an affirmation, I'm on the right track - track, music, pull yourself together Nick_), he instinctively brings his hands up to his ears, dragging one shaking through his hair. So loud. His eyes widen, lips part. So loud.

She's still staring at him, of course she bloody is. The melody's so integrated now that the frustration of not understanding is almost driving him -

"Come and lie down," she says, although he can't hear the tiny whisper her voice has become over the mix-tape symphony in his head. He reads her lips. Lie down. Yes. It'll be so much clearer with external stimuli removed.

* * *

_**Young**_

"_Colonel, this is TJ.__"_

Young resisted the urge to sigh. He could hear a familiar tone in her voice. She'd been crying, and now she was masking that with professional concern about something else. God, this ship. This ship, this whole cock-eyed mission, was like a bad French farce. Never one crisis at a time, always a whole bunch of interlinked bad patches, utterly devoid of respite. And him in the middle, like the patient stooge, taking all the hits.

He stared out at the silent ships. "Go ahead."

"_Sir, I have Dr Rush here in the infirmary. He__'__s not well.__"_

I could have told you that. The man's been sick for a long time, if you ask me. Still, there was a certain amount of relief to be had from TJ's call: he now knew where Rush was, and there was obviously some form of medical explanation for the odd behaviour, and if it was only to do with withdrawal symptoms again he, Young, would make it his business to personally test everything on the next planet for nicotine and caffeine. Aware of Eli's attention on him, he made a decision.

"Acknowledged. I can't come down there right now."

He paused, eye caught by the light of stars on the silver ship's hull, then thumbed the button again, turning away from the view and the distraction.

"TJ, how bad is he? We may need him."

"_He's sleeping."_

Sleeping. Well, that was bad enough. Rush didn't sleep. "Quarantine?"

"_Not yet. I'm pretty sure what he has isn't catching."_

Confirmation. Thankyou, TJ. What Rush has is a possibly terminal case of being Rush, included in which symptoms are being a goddamned idiot about looking after his health.

The "possibly terminal" phrase bothered him almost as soon as he'd thought it. Did it really matter if the man died through his own inability to recognise physical limits or through an alien virus? Either way, they were all in the same boat - up a creek without its crazy genius paddle, rudder and interpreter. A boat that was currently hanging nose-to-nose with potential enemies. Potential enemies who probably didn't speak English or understand the concept of talk first, _then_ shoot.

Maybe he _was_ going to go down there right now, after all. He could give orders for them all to get blown to pieces by aliens just as well over the comm.

He turned to speak to Eli, but Eli had gone, brushed past him out of the observation deck while he'd been caught up with TJ. Young was pretty sure he knew where he'd gone. What the hell. He almost smiled, right then and there, in the face of the unknown visitors and their silent presence outside.

"Eli," he said, aloud, to the empty room, "go help Brody. Keep me informed."

It sure was a lot easier giving orders when people were already doing it, whatever it was.

Rush wasn't asleep any more when he got there.

He could tell this before even walking into the infirmary: Rush's unique Scottish accent was even more pronounced in what was obviously deep fury. There was a crash, a litter of noises as something spilled across the floor, and TJ's voice raised in her military bark, something he knew she didn't use often.

"Hey_. Hey! _You're going to calm down. Right now. OK?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Young walked in slowly, moderating his footfall. It's a tactic most junior officers learn early in their careers: if you get heard or noticed by top brass in the wrong situations, you're the one who ends up on tea duty or quite possibly Antarctic duty.

You learn to tread carefully, in all senses of the phrase. Plus, when you're walking into a fight, try not to - ha ha - rush. Try to be calm from the beginning. It immediately gives you the advantage, especially if the other party is angry and likely to act on impulse.

Young decided that the irony of his being the calm one to Rush's impulsiveness was not lost on him. Some mornings he swore he could still feel the impact bruise of Rush's stubborn skull against his own, the sharp arch of the man's nose -

"_Right now,__" _TJ reiterated to her unseen patient, and it had to be Rush, didn't it, because there wasn't another Scotsman on board and besides Young was starting to think he'd take the memory of that particular cutting voice to his grave. His _early_ grave.

Cutting. Well, right now Rush's voice was like a flint axe, the sort of things early man had used to flay mammoth. Sharp. Not too polished. And oddly - flaky. Tinges of brittle. Young took another step, cautious.

"I need t' _sleep_! You don't understand!"

Slurring. Breaking. God, was the man drunk?

A syringe, still sealed in its sterile packaging, skittered across the floor to finish up at Young's boots. He followed it back with his gaze across a similar litter of equipment that hadn't rolled quite as well: swabs, gauze. TJ's eyes flicked to his, once, over Rush's shoulder - Rush had moved and put his back to the door, fortunately - and she looked purely exasperated. Once more Young had cause to mentally admire her. She was a good soldier, on top of so many other things. And given that civilians in the face of Rush's ire tended to crumple like so much wet paper, a good soldier was just what was needed.

She'd be a good mother.

Young brushed the thought aside rapidly.

"I do understand," said TJ, levelly. "And I'm sorry you woke up, but it wasn't any of my doing. _Doctor_."

Rush went quiet, as if the reminder of his title pulled his brain out of whatever weird morass it was degenerating into, then his head abruptly flicked round to stare accusingly over his shoulder at Young, hanging back in the periphery.

_I didn__'__t move. I swear he has eyes in the back of his head, sometimes. _

Except that those eyes and that attentiveness were focused on something that evidently wasn't in the room, a man seeing ghosts; Young felt a brief chill. Then Rush laughed, something possibly more worrying than any swearing he could have done. "I should have guessed," he said, eyeing Young humourlessly, "but isn't it rather a cliché?"

* * *

_**Rush**_

Rolf Harris. He hates Rolf Harris. It always reminds him of a Christmas party he went to in 1989. He'd made the mistake of going home - something he should never have done - and that bloody song had been on the radio constantly, all through Christmas and into the grey chill of New Year. Pubs full of hulking great dockers with tears in their eyes and pints in their hands, singing along to it - badly, he might add.

Poignant, apparently.

Nostalgic, apparently.

He'd hated the party and the song and now there it is again, and in a particularly gratingly manic falsetto, as if a mobile phone ringtone has started up just behind him in the doorway.

_- twolittleboyshadtwolittletoy seachhada - _

He turns.

It's Young.

For a moment, it's actually funny.

"I should have guessed, but isn't it rather a cliché?"

Young's looking at him as if he's mad.

Perfect. No change there, then.

"Something you want to talk to me about, Rush?" says Young, slowly and patiently. Rush stares at his mouth, reading his lips through the blanket of noise.

Well, now you mention it, not particularly. But you're here, just as you always are. His head spins. The music's conflicting with itself. In those precious few moments of sleep, it had been so clear. A single melody, with pattern and rhythm perfectly defined. He has to sleep again. He has to. Has to. With no interruptions. No waking up.

The mad Casio calculator beeping _fucking _Rolf Harris is starting to make his teeth ache.

"Go away, Colonel," he says, with an effort. It's getting hard to hear his own voice over the cacophony.

And Young, implacably, says "No." He's shaking his head, too. Easy to read.

Rush struggles with his anger, realises he's got his hand over his ears again which is no help at all, lowers them. Young turns to Johansen and murmurs something which Rush can't quite catch. Never mind. Not important. He tries to sort out the threads again. Music is ordered. Structured. It follows patterns. Never mind that there are too many conflicting melodies. Look for the whole pattern. It's there. Intelligent design. A composer's eyes, that's what he needs.

And for a pure, clean, beautiful moment, he sees it.

He wakes up in Young's grip, being hoisted up onto the medical couch.

* * *

_**Young**_

This was getting to be a habit.

"Something you want to talk to me about, Rush?"

Young had needed to stick to calm enquiry, because Christ, Rush looked awful, staring at him as if he wasn't seeing him. That my-eyes-are-up-here feeling sharpened, returned. He felt almost slighted. What was going on in there that was so important it eclipsed him?

"Go away, Colonel."

Much though he would have liked to, he couldn't. Leaving TJ with this - this train wreck of a human being just wasn't in him.

"No."

He turned to TJ when Rush didn't immediately respond. "Get him back in bed and keep him there, Lieutenant. We'll manage things without him."

He barely had time to wonder what the hell was with Rush's new nervous tic of sticking his fingers in his ears before TJ, her medic's anticipatory instincts evidently better than his, lunged forward.

And sure enough, that was Rush, dropping like a puppet with its strings cut, his eyes rolled back in his head.

This was getting to be a habit.

Stepping in quickly, he shouldered TJ aside - wasn't heavy lifting something pregnant women didn't do? - and slipped his arms under Rush's body. The scientist was utterly limp. Dead weight, thought Young, morbidly, hefting him. TJ pulled back Rush's eyelids, checked his responses, ran a hand over the back of his head to check for blood, before wordlessly gesturing to the couch. Young slid Rush across, began to lower him with as much care as he could - sure, Rush wasn't his best buddy, but he was not going to deliberately inconvenience a sick man -

"_Colonel, this is Brody, please respond."_

Young began to slide an arm out from under Rush, used his free hand to depress the button, open the channel.

Rush woke up and punched him, with no warning whatsoever. Young's vision cut out briefly, his teeth clacking harshly together as his chin took the impact. Pain flooded his head. Rush's struggle out of his remaining grip was the work of a moment.

He heard TJ draw a breath.

"_Colonel?"_

* * *

_**Rush**_

Rush's eyes open. His fist comes up. Young's jaw feels jarringly hard against his knuckles.

He's lost the thread. Nothing else matters. He needs it back.

He lunges forward at TJ now, breaking his own rules in his desperation and grasping at her collar.

"Sedate me."

* * *

_**Young**_

Rush's demand was an accusatory hiss. He had TJ by the collar.

He had _TJ _by the collar. Young's hand tightened on the radio.

"Do it!"

Young recognised his own voice after he had spoken. "TJ, do it. Knock him out."

"Sir, our stocks of -"

"_TJ."_

Young swiped his hand across his mouth. Not bleeding. Hadn't bitten his tongue. His finger jabbed forward, pointing between her and Rush. Rush's expression was virulent.

"Knock that son-of-a-bitch out, or I will."

He regretted it a instant later: her eyes were accusing. Still, she slid some of that godawful alien venom into a syringe and injected the now silent, shaking and strangely capitulatory Rush with it.

"_Colonel? Is everything OK?"_

Of course, what all that had sounded like to Brody and the peanut gallery up at the control station was anyone's guess.

Rush flopped back on the couch, eyes drifting closed. Out for the count, and thank god for that.

"_Was that _Rush_?"_

Young ignored Eli's worried, incredulous tone.

"What have you got?" he asked.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Author says: I love Tumblr for giving me IKEA references. Thankyou, dear Yarking and fellow compatriots. Also: editing doesn't like me and wants me to suffer.**_

* * *

_**Young**_

Of course, what they_ didn__'__t _have was solid answers, and if Young had to see Brody's lips twisting preparatory to delivering his get-out-of-jail-free card (which was "We really have to get Rush's opinion on that") one more time he was going to throttle the man himself and probably even feel good about it. Brody and Volker: the Bert and Ernie of the Icarus project, and if that didn't make Rush Oscar the Grouch Young didn't know what did.

In one very basic human way he felt for them: they weren't trained for this, any of it, and they'd landed on their asses in the worst situation possible, with the potentially the most difficult Scottish martinet alive calling the shots. But Volker's cowed reaction to Rush when the lights went out at the beginning of all this insanity had left an unfortunate lasting impression Young just couldn't shake. They were soft. They weren't up to the job.

Beggars can't be choosers, Everett: they were all he had. Rush had finally lost his tenuous grip on reality and there was a pair of alien ships out there in the blackness watching, probably with amusement, as Young tried to do the astronavigational equivalent of putting together a flatpack wardrobe without any instructions and half the screws missing.

_Try not to think about having screws loose. Or about Rush. Or indeed the combination of the two. _

"Carrier wave," said Volker, tapping at something on the screen as Eli frowned and gnawed his lip in the background. "Or at least a transmission wave form of some kind. Our best guess is the smaller ship is transmitting it. Nothing big. In fact it's so low-level we nearly didn't see it."

Eli made a strangled noise.

"OK, fine. We didn't see it. Eli picked it up."

Eli cut in at this point. "But it's not like it's new. That's the problem. The reason it didn't really register as something, y'know, weird and different with us is because the screens have been registering it for ages. Like background radiation."

"So that means," Volker went on, "that these ships may have been around us a while. Just that we…we haven't noticed them."

He sounded as if he fully expected to be verbally beaten down for such an assertion. To be honest, Young couldn't find it in himself to do anything of the kind. Because of course between the lack of breathable air, drinkable water, renewable power and the whole host of attendant issues that came piled upon the heels of trying to run an impromptu, ramshackle space colony peopled by raging egotists and uppity civilians, a few extra ions out of place in a completely unfamiliar and uncharted part of the universe were hardly likely to cause even a paranoid astrophysicist to start twitching.

Not that anyone knew any paranoid scientists, oh no.

"Yeah, like I said when they first showed up," said Brody, reflexively fiddling with a hopefully innocuous bit of the Ancient console, "as soon as we noticed them, it was like they'd always been there."

"OK," said Young, after a beat, not thinking this sounded okay in the least. "So this wave. What's it doing?"

"Waving?" offered Volker, giving his best deadpan. It faltered in the face of Young's genuine stony expression. "Uh, we don't know."

Surprise, thought Young, wryly.

"But," added Brody, with the (probably undeserved) air of someone pulling a rabbit out of their hat, "we do know it isn't affecting the _Destiny'_s systems. At least, not in any way we can see. So it's not a sabotage beam."

Young and Eli both looked at him then, similar expressions flickering in their eyes, Eli's expression tinged with avarice.

"Sabotage beam," Eli repeated. "Oh, I _so_ want one of those."

"Well, I don't," said Young, mildly but firmly. "What I do want is to know whether I can expect to find us being boarded or shot at within the next few hours. And I also want to know when we can get this ship moving again. Away from here."

"W-wait a minute. Colonel?" Eli's eyes were pleading. "What about the stargate?"  
Young, already turning on his heel, paused and looked back.

"What about it?"

"Well, aren't you even a tiny bit curious about it? I mean, it's obvious it has to be on one of those ships, right? There are no planets within range and yet we dropped out of FTL anyway."

"And there's no countdown," Brody confirmed what Young had already noticed on the periphery of his awareness: that regular, already-becoming-familiar alien clock was dark and silent. "Not that we've got the timing equations figured out or anything, but theoretically, no countdown means we've got all the time in the world."

"Providing they don't shoot at us," Young prompted, flatly. Brody looked briefly irritated, then chastened. He broke eye contact.

"Yeah. Provided they don't do that."

"And how long until we jump without a countdown?" It was obvious as the words left Young's lips that nobody knew. Nobody had any real way of knowing. Even Rush's infuriating, insensitive arrogance would have been more welcome than this yawning maw of ignorance that was just sucking all the confidence out of the atmosphere.

"So basically we're sitting ducks, waiting to be plucked."

He let the analogy sink in, noticing that Brody looked slightly sick.

"Well, if we're ducks," said Eli, who didn't, "isn't there just a small possibility that those aliens are carrying a bagful of bread? Don't know if you've noticed, but we're kinda running out of supplies."

Young's blank stare still somehow managed to convey that yes, he had indeed noticed. And that possibly he'd had a bellyful of the duck analogy. Eli looked mournfully back at him.

"Back to work, gentlemen," Young said, eventually, when it was evident no further comments were forthcoming.

* * *

_**Rush**_

Being unconscious is the best thing to have happened to him for ages.

The venom floods his system, forcing all those taut, uncompromising muscles in his neck and shoulders to relax. It's funny he's never truly appreciated the pain those cause. They hurt so much more in their release than in their everyday, relentless torsion. But now they're slipping behind him, a fading memory, as the music finally stops being a repetitive jumble and starts being a melody of understanding.

No pain. No demands on his body or his mind.

None of that ridiculously cluttering low-level coping mechanism he has to keep in place to stop people thinking him certifiably crazy and treating him accordingly. While he couldn't give a single solitary fuck what people think of him, being treated like a dangerous lunatic has a certain limiting quality when you're trying to get work done. Or indeed trying to get other people to get work done. The mechanism that does its best to cover up the essential Nicholas Rush-ness of his personality and convince co-workers that here stands a kindred spirit human being, hail-fellow-well-met (or as close an approximation as it can manage, given the raw materials it has to work with) is remarkably draining on his thought processes.

So - that's gone. He almost consciously lets the mechanism go as he drifts under the sluggish, insidious influence of the venom, his fingers flexing in the body that feels millions of miles away. Dangerous lunatic it is, then.

But a dangerous lunatic with a real feeling for Boccharini's cello concertos, that's for certain.

He feels his way now with the intangible fingertips inside his head, the physical ones actually attached to his body leaden and only twitching now on the couch. Everyone who thinks for a living knows these phantom hands. They pick at and unpick the strands of problems, run along the threads of theories to feel for inconsistencies in the weave. Thinkers are the pianists of the brain, and their mental hands should be a pianist's hands - sure, swift.

He raises those hands inside his head now to keep time. A conductor with his baton. The cello concerto _andante_ is lovely, if you like that sort of thing. While he's not sorry at all about the loss of Rolf Harris, he's feeling more in the mood for something with a bit of bounce to it. Something to match his slight, sedative-induced euphoria.

Something with a bit less of a classical strings bent, at least.

Something that reminds him less of Gloria.

Thinking of her is a mistake, he knows it as soon as it happens.

Luigi Boccherini is gone, and in his place is Laura Branigan. Luigi Boccherini, Laura Branigan. Another L, another B, is there a connection there? A pattern? Rush grabs for it and gets hold of the lyrics instead.

Something snaps. The volume increases until it's almost painful, the female vocal accusatory.

_I think you've got to slow down_

_Before you start to blow it_

_I think you're headin' for a breakdown_

_So be careful not to show it -_

And he sees something, but he's not at all certain it's the right thing. A ship. Not Destiny, but a different ship. No, two ships. A beam of light, a pyramid flare. Again? The face of that religious fanatic who stayed behind on Paradise, what was his name, doctor -

_Doctor Rush?_

He turns.

_With all the voices in your head calling Gloria…._

And he sees it.

* * *

_**TJ**_

"Doctor Rush?"

TJ had thought she'd seen him move. And he was twitching now, in his drugged sleep, but his body was otherwise as limp and inert as he'd been when she'd carried him back from the gate room not long ago.

_Such an idiot. He is __**such**__ -_

In the privacy of her own head she'd nicknamed him Doctor Dropdown, as she expected him to do that very thing on a semi-regular basis. Rush's fingers twitched, then tightened on the cloth of the couch. He was still clearly out for the count, but the effects of the alien venom were too unpredictable for TJ's liking. He could wake up anytime. The gold wedding ring on his finger gleamed in the light as his hands flicked reflexively.

Briefly TJ wondered what Mrs Rush had been like. Had she been a match for her husband's almost rabid enthusiasms? Had she burnt out trying to keep up with him? Or had she been the foil, the calm one when he was raging and the artistic one where he was science?

One thing was for sure, she'd had to have been one hell of a woman to put up with him, either way.

TJ ran her own hand over her stomach, in the manner she'd found herself doing lately without thinking. She still found herself surprised when she caught herself doing it. Surely that was something other women did. The sort of women who weren't soldiers, who had time for flowers and kittens and all that fairytale crap. Whose prince had not only come, he'd stayed. And hadn't gone back to his wife. Her lip curled slightly. These women, they caressed their growing bumps and talked about the miracle of life and the inevitability of love.

Out here, new life was still a miracle, but an unwelcome one, and love was a rare commodity. The only thing TJ currently felt as she passed her hands over her stomach was regret, anger, and not a little fear.

"Chalk one up to any other unmarried mom, Tamara," she said, out loud to the room. "That's all normal."

Back to work. She automatically checked Rush's vitals, passing a hand over his pulse, and satisfied he wasn't about to flake out any more seriously on her, turned to go back to taking inventory of stocks.

"TJ!"

She looked up to see Park being half-dragged in by Greer, and her worries over the unborn baby dropped to the background.

Two collapses, even if one of them _was_ Doctor Dropdown, were too much of a coincidence.


End file.
